


you've stayed in my dreams

by bountifulsilences



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Emotional Hurt, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Slash, Reminiscing, Reunions, Some comfort, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, and a lot of, okay i can't think of anymore tags but you should read this, there's a plot twist that you probably saw coming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 14:18:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15317316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bountifulsilences/pseuds/bountifulsilences
Summary: "For months, Bucky slipped from his fingers like sand. The moment he obtained a possible location, fist full of hope and determination, infiltrating the place only ended in confronting the harrowing truth that he was unwanted. Bucky didn’t want to be found."that is, until he does. it doesn't quite go how Steve expected it to.





	you've stayed in my dreams

**Author's Note:**

> I know what you're not thinking "again?? this bitch got no life" which true, don't but the song that inspired this was too incredible to just listen to. I had to write something to accompany it so viola! hurtSteve (all I ever write, really) and some contemplations he don't wanna have.
> 
> all mistakes are my own, i hope you enjoy this regardless! :)

For months, Bucky slipped from his fingers like sand. The moment he obtained a possible location, fist full of hope and determination, infiltrating the place only ended in confronting the harrowing truth that he was unwanted. Bucky didn’t want to be found.

But he continued, searching and raiding and breaking anything he could get his hands on out of frustration. He knew he was a ghost, like mist travelling in the air, transparent and gaseous, unable to be captured. Steve didn’t want to cage him though, he didn’t know what he wanted. Just that he had to see Bucky.

The thing was, Steve had wounds that no medicine could cure. The infection of despair coursing through his veins couldn’t be eradicated using antibiotics because he had tried them. SHIELD thought antidepressants would work. They didn’t. The gaping hole in his chest was too large to stitch together, the debilitating headache was a constant, his mind was paralysed forcing his body to operate on autopilot.

When the time came, he gave orders and he sentenced breaks and he considered the betterment of his friends, but not without a push. Natasha and Sam and the legion of unknown help they received were reality checks that he couldn’t admit he wanted.

He wanted to dream, to see a familiar face that would no doubt replace the dejection with mirth and open his airways so breathing came a little easy in the morning. But when scouting for a man who happened to move like morning dew, on the grid for little time before it seemingly dissipates into nothing, he couldn’t waste time on things like that.

He’d dream when he found Bucky. He’d escape reality then because Bucky had always been a happy place for him. A kick on the backside when he needed one, a provider of all things content cocooning him in safety and warmth and light, and most importantly, he was the best friend a man could have asked for. Nothing more, though he wished for it, but nothing less either.

However, finding Bucky was as impossible as surviving a plummet into ice within a plane containing nuclear bombs ( _so, not very?_ ) so he never knew when he’d find refuge. Absolution. Running on fumes and desperation he sometimes asked Sam, does he even deserve to know how Bucky is doing?

Because it was such a thing that, Bucky’s existence though permanent had always been fickle too. He would vanish for nights in a row, gone as quick as the words from his throat, whilst Steve would often go out with his own friends and explore what he could with what little he had earned. So, having such a history of leaving but always coming back, he wondered if the same rules applied.

Reuniting with Bucky after seventy years wasn’t the same as the morning after, but it could have been. Nothing had to change, but Hydra’s intervention and the Winter Soldier’s past meant everything had, he didn’t know what to think or accept. Futile as it was, he resorted to trying to ignore it.

Objectives were missions, he could follow through with those as long as there were no chances of casualties. In this mission, he knew there would be none and Natasha may have countered that all she’d like but Steve wasn’t foolish. Having spent time with Bucky on the carrier, he predicted the response his arrival would elicit, and it was not conceived of violence. Sure, Bucky may draw a weapon to protect himself, but upon registering that it was Steve, he wouldn’t shoot. He just wouldn’t.

( _He was foolish. Foolish enough to believe that his wishes would be true._ )

So, slipping through the door of the shady building, not entirely convinced where he was and what he was trying to accomplish, he hoped and he prayed that someone would be waiting on the other side. He needed there to be someone. If there was a barren room waiting for him full of evidence that someone previously lived there he’d quite possibly punch a wall.

Miraculously, there was. A figure lingered by the window, dressed in clothes that had seen better days but were enough to blend into a society that hurdled together than stuck out. Wearing black was camouflage in the modern world. He didn’t turn at Steve’s entrance, didn’t even react at the intrusion. He was consistently rigid.

Having spent months looking for him, seeing Bucky in the flesh felt surreal. Steve didn’t know what to do know that he had succeeded in his mission: suddenly, he wondered if he should never have tugged on the thread that lured him there. The boulder on his chest that had been weighing him down elevated into his throat rendering his mute until his swallowed and extinguished it.

Hopeless, like everything he did was, his hand reached out wanting to touch and to feel that it was really happening, but his fingers curled into the palm slowly, losing all motivation quickly. Arm falling to his side, limp and lifeless, he shook his head at his own stupidity. Of course, he couldn’t touch him, not until he let him.

“You found me,” Bucky told him, eerily still.

“I did.”

He managed to do what was deemed impossible. Considering the lack of Sam, he had done it by himself- alone. It was an achievement. It made him feel competent, destroying Hydra bases wasn’t all that he was good for, he could do more.

“What now?” Bucky asked, turning around so that Steve came to face with the man who was once his second skin.

They were best friends, they were inseparable and now looking at Bucky, inspecting his face and drinking in the dark stubble and eyes, he realised that Bucky was like his shadow and he was his. Came and went as quick as the times decreed. ( _Permanent and fickle, they were a duo._ )

He looked uncomfortable, like the skin he was wearing was too large for his physique and it kept sliding off. He was learning to be Bucky and failing, Steve deduced. His thin lips were pressed together tiredly, and the language of his eyes had been silenced for a long time. Unless he spoke, he wasn’t saying anything at all.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, shrugging without disturbing their eye contact. “I wasn’t sure this was the time I’d find you, I didn’t prepare.”

“You haven't,” said Bucky, monotone.

“I have. You’re here, aren’t you?” Steve reasoned, ashamed at his rising heart beat in the potentially pernicious setting. He had to maintain composure. Things weren’t secure- anything could happen.

“I’m only here because you want me to be, Steve.” Bucky smiled and Steve wished he hadn’t, because it was drenched in pain and sadness, downturned and dead. There was no heat behind the movement. His eyes seemed to worsen.

Nobody could ever argue that Steve was a machine incapable of feelings, because his iris momentarily went hazy so that he couldn’t see, like a white cloud was preventing the colours of the outside world from coming in. He refused to cry. He would not be weak. Bucky fell from the train like a tear from Steve’s eyes and never returned like the evaporated water that had once drenched his suit in the blazed pub in ‘45.

He couldn’t complain to his eyes, asking why they shed when Bucky was alive and very much not well. But he needed to confront someone and that someone was him. With Bucky staring him down he could do nothing, instead stubbornly keep the tears ensnared.

“Why the-” Bucky pointed at his own eyes weakly.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, “you want to explain why you’ve been running from me for so long?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know the reason for my own actions,” Bucky explained, and he was telling the truth, Steve just knew it. But it didn’t feel like it was enough. He needed something more sustainable. However, not wanting to push it, he let it drop.

How he could have served SHIELD for so long, blissfully unaware of the poison that was killing Peggy and Howard’s dream, he just didn’t know. With Hydra calling the shots, using Bucky as though he was a rifle- an explosive- a Goddamn weapon, how could Steve have done it? It didn’t make any sense.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last, the words scathing his tongue and embedding the letters onto flesh. “I served for Hydra while they…”

“I told you this,” Bucky stated, almost like a chiding, “back in the war. Trust no one. Not some fancy organisation and not a man you wouldn't be able to close your eyes and sleep next to. I told you.”

“I know Bucky,” he said with a sigh. “But I thought…”

“Thought they were fighting they good fight. Thought because Peggy invested in it, it was good.”

Steve smiled sadly, recalling a youthful voice joke, “ _Agent Carter, stop. You're making a grown man blush like a little school girl_.”

Peggy had always wanted Bucky to call her just that: Peggy. Steve encouraged him too, yet he never did. Referring to her as agent and ma’am and everything professional under the sun. Well, he said it now at least.

“Yeah, I did. I was hopeful, and I had to force myself to trust something I was never comfortable with. Is that what you wanted to hear?” Steve asked him, not accusing but resigned.

“You should have known better.”

He knew that. God, Steve was bad at following rules and anything that opposed his moral views, but he valued Bucky's words. If you wouldn't be able to sleep next to a partner, why work with them? In the field they played, trust was imperative, yet Steve had none. Going against his gut and Bucky’s advice he did what he never should, and he regretted it.

It illuminated Bucky’s situation, sure, yet killed countless of innocent lives. The Winter Soldier would not have been kept a secret, he sincerely believed that even if he never joined SHIELD he'd find the trail to Bucky. It was just, Hydra had ruined his existence. The would not let him breathe.

“I did. But to do the supposed right thing, I ignored my gut instinct. I ignored you.”

It was silent, save for the intense thinking on Steve's part. Bucky appeared collected, stiff and face paralysed, remaining the same. If Steve was delusional, he would have mistaken the twitch of Bucky's lips as amusement, but it wasn't. Why would it be?

Why would Bucky be amused at Steve's corrupt destiny? His bad luck that had plagued him his entire life. It wasn't true to his nature to whine about his disadvantages and what's wrong with his life but considering how he felt cursed and that was the only viable description of his situation, it was too hard not to tumble into the prospect. He was predestined to lead a discontent lifestyle.

“Fate always takes course,” Bucky remarked, “what has to happen, will happen.”

“What do you mean?” Steve questioned, eyebrows furrowing.

“But it's the choices we make that decide what is to come,” he continued, as though Steve didn't speak up.

“I-"

“When you joined SHIELD,” Bucky interrupted, calm and watchful, “you altered your fate to lead up to this. This is the life you chose, Steve.”

Beginning to shake his head, Steve protested, “but- I was trying to do the right thing. When it mattered, I did. I didn't let you activate the carriers and I didn't let Pierce- actually, no. It wasn't just me. Everyone involved didn't let Hydra win. We did the right thing.”

Perhaps joining SHIELD was necessary. Destroying the carriers and saving the lives of those on Hydra’s list was important, it had to be done. And it was, by him and Sam and Natasha and Hill. They may have regretted joining SHIELD initially but looking at the potential kill count, it was good that they did. Hydra didn't succeed.

He couldn't blame his fate; his destiny was written as it were. The people responsible for the misconduct were the ones who deserved the blame, they induced the conditions that made what was determined occur. This was the path they coerced everyone down. They were the ones at fault.

“You found me,” Bucky said again, not for the lack of words but almost knowingly. Like he knew that Steve had figured it out.

Breathing out a large breath, he nodded and replied, “yeah, I guess I did.”

“You chose to find me.”

“Fate works in mysterious ways,” he tried to joke, but it fell flat like most of them did. Clearing his throat, he said, “I will always find you, until you tell me to stop.”

Because Bucky would slip through his fingers like sand from the Sahara, he’d allow himself to be detected, to be held. But when he had to flee he would slip through the cracks of Steve’s hold and pour back into hiding.

“And if I want you to stop?” Bucky questioned, empty and lacking any insinuation. Steve’s breath caught in his throat.

During the months of searching he had thought about Bucky telling him to “fuck off” and “get out of my face” because it was a high possibility. His presence may not be welcome, he was the past a man was trying to scavenge, forcing them to collide would not end well, Steve knew that.

But he never confronted it. Whenever it came to him, he ran from it as though it was a bomb and it would destroy everything he was holding onto ( _he was holding onto belief rather than facts, he wanted to remain ignorant in a painfully informative world_ ) because he was scared. Would it really devastate him? Would he recover? Could he handle the truth?

Steve didn’t know why he was so intent on finding Bucky, there was no sure chance that Bucky would recover his memories or had by the time Steve reached him- he couldn't write it in blood that Bucky would want to be the man he was or know anything about the past. Uncertainty clouded the sensitive subject that Steve scurried around it tentatively, not wanting to trigger an avalanche that would submerge him.

If he succumbed to the doubts then he wouldn't have pushed and pushed, and Bucky would effectively be dead. The man that emerged from within the Winter Soldier wouldn't have to be his friend and nor did he want to know Steve. It disparaged him, but he was spoiled goods to begin with, Bucky's decision would only confirm it.

“If you want me to leave, you just have to say so Bucky. I’ll go,” he promised, hoping his eyes would convey the sincerity he felt.

Bucky’s eyes remained lifeless, void of the stories they once projected a century ago. Words weren't his only expertise, Steve recalled getting lost in the oceanic irises, a mixture of grey and blue combined. His eyes reminded Steve of the sea after a storm, settling and calming, light grey with blue surfacing from the depths.

The anecdotes that once existed there were silenced, snatched, and disassembled so the host didn't know what they were and how they were. After spending time trying to reassemble the stories, Bucky's eyes looked like they had given up and surrendered to the fate that they would never remember. They were blank.

“I don't want you to,” he said eventually. “You can stay Steve, stay with me.”

“Are you sure? I can leave if you want.”

_Please don't make. Please don't ask me to._

Bucky smiled vaguely once more. “You can stay.”

He let out a relieved sigh. “I don't know what I'd do if you were to say no.”

He hoped he'd never have to, wasn't sure how he would cope with being so ruthlessly unwanted. Never let it be said that Steve Rogers isn't selfish, because he was when it came to Bucky, who tied in frequently with his happiness. Who said he wasn't foolish?

Another silence developed between them, not oppressive but contemplative. Once more, only on Steve's side. Bucky was indifferent and appeared to have nothing to say or think of. Maybe he was just good at concealing his emotions and thoughts and feelings. Steve wasn't, that's why he couldn't lie.

He'd tried countless times but according to everyone the truth was written across his face, contradicting the lies that were spat from his mouth. Earnest, that's what he was. Not exactly an advantage but attractive. People apparently wanted a partner like that. He didn't want anyone, he was content with his memories and the life he had lost, soothing the aches that would never leave and soon consume him.

“Steve,” Bucky asked, tearing him from his ruminations and demanding attention.

“Yeah Buck,” he replied, gazing into his eyes.

“Where were you?” Bucky looked away briefly, for the first time in their encounter but resumed his stare immediately. “Where am I?”

“W-what do you mean? You're here, with me,” Steve said, wondering if Bucky had a lapse in his memory and had forgotten. What was he to do if he had? There was no quick get help for this scenario and he cou-

“No. No. Steve, where am I? Where are you? Why can't you find me?” Bucky asked, emotion leaking into his voice for the first time since they'd been speaking. He sounded wrecked, destroyed.

“I have found you Buck,” Steve told him, walking to him slowly, arms out for him to bat away if he needed. “You're with me. You're here and so am I.”

“Where is here, Steve? Because I've been waiting and waiting but every time you get close you...slip through my fingers like sand. Why can't you find me, Steve?” Bucky demanded, rich in desperation and borderline hysterical.

Against his better judgement, Steve enclosed Bucky in his arms and hushed him, nursing him the only way he could for such a circumstance. Steve could deal with bullets and rash and burns, the war had them tending their own wounds. But this never happened- what was he supposed to do? To say?

“I can find you, I've been trying so hard. So, so hard Bucky and I'm here now, okay? We’re together again,” he explained, rocking Bucky back and forth as he sobbed, clawing at his shoulders and arms brokenly.

“Find me Steve!” Bucky wailed, startling him to a halt. “Find me now. I've been waiting, and you never show and why are you doing this? Where are you? Where am I? I’d tell you if I could.”

“You’re-you’re here aren't you?” Steve asked, dubious to the real-life events imploding before him.

“I’m lost. Every time you get close you leave me again- why do you leave? Just find me, please. Where are you? Why won't you come to me? Let me go to you?” Bucky asked, voice reduced to a whisper, mumbled into Steve's chest.

Mouth dropped open, his body defenceless and his mind awry, Steve flinched as he recognised what had happened and what was going on. Bucky wasn't lapsing, Steve was just-

 

*

*

*

*

 

Steve gasped awake, heart beating rapidly in his chest and his breaths shallow and fast. It was just a-

-dream.

He had been dreaming the entire thing. Bucky was still undercover in the world and he was all alone in his bed, recovering in a hotel in Bucharest, wishful but heavy hearted. They received intel that Bucky was hiding there, so of course Steve had to investigate. He wouldn't be Steve if he didn't, Sam declared.

Falling back onto his bed, eyes gravitating to the ceiling, enveloped in the dark room, he sighed and wiped a firm hand over his face. He wasn't expecting to find Bucky; his hope was reaching its end very quickly and now it was just to prove to himself that there was no one there.

Whilst Bucky toured the world, on the run from everyone including him, Steve decided that perhaps the only way to see him would be in the dreams where his memories were trapped. Maybe Bucky was gone, the sand now turned water had evaporated. But he would remain forever in Steve's memories as dunes of the time he existed, he’d thrive there for the centuries to come and the lives Steve was to live.

 

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr:  bountifulsilences   
> twitter:  AwestruckBuck 


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